Most stage and movie productions of French playwright Edmond Rostand’s 1897 “Cyrano de Bergerac” have featured Cyrano — the man who pens the letters that make the beautiful Roxanne fall for someone else — with a giant prosthetic nose attached to the actor’s face, making it visibly clear why Cyrano believes a perfect woman like Roxanne could never love him.
However, in a conversation with ’s Steve Pond, “Cyrano”Joe Wright, director, said that he chose to skip the nose because it made the story more modern and the character more relatable than when it dominates the scene.
Erica Schmidt wrote and directed the musical version that inspired the film. It was off-Broadway’s 2018 production. Both the play and the film star Peter Dinklage as Cyrano (Schmidt is Dinklage’s wife).
Wright eliminated the schnozz, just like she did with her stage production. Instead, Cyrano’s insecurity arises from his short stature, incorporating Dinklage’s own dwarfism into the story. Also as in the play, the height issue doesn’t get much screen attention either, with the focus being on the universal fear of being unworthy of love rather than any physical issue.
“That’s why I wanted to make the movie, I identified with it, it felt personal,”Wright joined Seamus McGarvey as cinematographer on the panel. “It’s a fear of intimacy, you know. I love the idea that (the word) intimacy is ‘into me see’ — this fear of intimacy that that we all have that stops us from being able to be loved. So, certainly removing the nose was was key to that choice.”
Wright, “Wherever we come from, everyone’s got something that they think is unlovable about them.”
McGarvey stated, “The movie is a musical, with some very large songs, but the performance style is understated. There are showstopper theatrics that are jettisoned in much the same way Cyrano presents without the over-sized nose.”
“Somehow the thoughts become sung rather than spoken,”McGarvey stated. “And I think that we decided not to go for,the declamatory style for most of the songs in the film.
McGarvey added, “I’ve worked on musicals before that have big song and dance numbers, like ‘The Greatest Showman,’ for instance. We have a couple of Beyoncé-type moments in this film, but I think what we were aiming for more was that sense of quiet portraiture in the song.”According to him, the choice of large format camera and lenses allowed for “a medium format portrait photography moment of silent, almost whispered song for some of the most powerful moments, I think, in the film.”
McGarvey explained that the most difficult challenges for filmmakers were posed by the Italian locations, such as the famously active Mount Etna. “It’s one of the most memorable experiences in my career thus far,”McGarvey laughed. “And I am glad that I can experience it now in the safety of a cinema, rather than getting splattered up by an angry volcano.”
The video will show you the discussion. above.